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CREATE11 summer festival, 24 June to 25 July - Hackney highlights

The CREATE11 summer festival returns on 24 June with a month-long packed programme of over 150 events across music, design, art, food and film.

Now in its fourth year, CREATE is the annual arts festival that celebrates Europe’s largest cultural quarter across the 2012 host boroughs of Barking and Dagenham, Greenwich, Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest.

Hackney Council Cabinet Member for Regeneration and the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, Cllr Guy Nicholson, said: “Through CREATE we can showcase the extraordinary concentration of creativity that is found in east London and bring about the largest participatory arts led festival in the UK.”

This year, CREATE brings highlights including Folly for a Flyover – a group of east London artists called Assemble will take over a disused motorway undercroft beneath the A12 in Hackney Wick to put on workshops, performances and film screenings throughout the festival. Assemble won The Bank of America Merrill Lynch CREATE Art Award - the largest participatory art award in the UK, offering a £40,000 fund to artists based in the host boroughs to involve local people in a public art commission.

By day on Saturdays and Sundays from 24 June to 24 July, the Folly will host a café, events and boat trips exploring the surrounding waterways. From 2pm free drop-in workshops and activities will fill the folly, from a bug hotel building with Capital Growth through to a performance from the 30-piece East London Brass Band and a spectacular family party hosted by Disco Loco.

At night from Friday to Sunday, the building’s large outdoor steps will double as an auditorium to host a programme of screenings and performances, from animation classics including early Disney and the anime blockbuster, Akira, through to experimental films including 2001 Space Odyssey and George Méliès’ Trip to the Moon with a live score programmed in partnership with the Barbican’s Watch Me Move exhibition.

Award-winning poet, playwright and performer Inua Ellams will take a small group on the Midnight Run on the night of 2 July – a 12 hour exploration of the city at night. Starting at 6pm the group will take in various east London venues dropping in on other CREATE events along the way.

One of the stops will be a disused bunker in Dalston, where writer Sukhdev Sandhu will read excerpts from his 2006 Art Angel-commissioned journal Night Haunts giving his observations of the city’s nocturnal activity, from night cleaners to praying nuns. Sitting in the dark, the audience will experience a spooky evening.

On 20 July, the FARM:shop in Dalston will host a panel discussion with Beatrice Galilee, an architectural curator and writer, about urban agriculture in art and architecture. Stick around afterwards to see the micro fish farm, hi-tech indoor allotment, rooftop chicken coop and polytunnel.

The Floating Cinema has been created by Hackney-based team of architects Studio Weave and artist duo Somewhere (Nina Pope and Karen Guthrie) to host a varied and vibrant programme of on-board film screenings, quirky canal tours, talks and workshops. To find out more about Floating Cinema events visit: www.floatingcinema.info and: www.portavilion.com